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Photo by: joanneleon. July, 2013.
Photo by: joanneleon. July, 2013.
Photo by: joanneleon. July, 2013.
Photo by: joanneleon. July, 2013.
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Donovan playing Buchanan Street, Glasgow on 1 July 2013
News & Opinion
Update: Senate Judiciary Reviews NSA Data Collection Program (C-SPAN)
Update: The latest big revelations on the Snowden files published by Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian. Slides, screenshots, etc.
Revealed: NSA tool that collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'
• XKeyscore gives 'widest-reaching' collection of online data
• NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches
• Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history
A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.
The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.
The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.
"I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".
'Blow the Whistle, Face Life in Jail': Progressives Slam Verdict in Manning Case
'The US government will come after you, no holds barred, if you're thinking of revealing evidence of its unlawful behavior', says Amnesty
Reactions to the verdict in the Bradley Manning trial were swift on Tuesday.
Though some found solace in the fact that the 25-year-old US Army whistleblower was found "not guilty" on the "most outrageous" charge of "aiding the enemy," voices across the progressive community were expressing mixtures of outrage and sadness after Judge Col. Denise Lind found Manning guilty on 19 other counts that could lead to a sentence of more than 100 years in prison.
Long article, four pages, and a very good read. It makes me all the more furious at the people who constantly take shots at whistleblowers and call them traitors. They pay a big price and most of the time the information they reveal is very valuable to the American people. One thing is for sure, they don't do it lightly and they pay a huge price.
After the whistle: Revealers of government secrets share how their lives have changed
He lost his $155,000-a-year job and pension, even though in 2011 the criminal case against him fell apart. The former top spokesman for the Justice Department, Matthew Miller, later said the case against Drake may have been an “ill-considered choice for prosecution.”
Drake, now 56, is tall and lanky and dresses as though he’s ready, at any moment, to go on a gentle hike. He is the type of person who likes consistency. He went to work at Apple the day after the charges against him were dropped, surprising his co-workers who thought he would at least take a day off. In 2010, he got an adjunct professor job at Strayer University but was fired soon after, he says, while he was under government investigation.
“I was just blacklisted,” he said, adding that he started his own company but has only had minor work. “People were afraid to deal with a federal government whistleblower.”
Drake long planned to be a career public servant. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1979 and flew on spy planes and once was a CIA analyst and an expert in electronic intelligence missions. On Sept. 11, 2001, he reported for his first day of work as a senior executive at the NSA’s Fort Meade campus, and shortly thereafter, he voiced “the gravest of concerns” regarding a secret domestic surveillance program that, he says, was launched shortly after the attacks.
[...]
Last year, he was working when he spotted an unlikely customer: Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who came in to check out iPhones.
Drake introduced himself and asked: “Do you know why they have come after me?”
“Yes, I do,” Holder said.
“But do you know the rest of the story?,” he asked.
Holder quickly left with his security detail, Drake said.
Center for Constitutional Rights.
CCR Condemns Manning Verdict, Questions Future of First Amendment
While the "aiding the enemy" charges (on which Manning was rightly acquitted) received the most attention from the mainstream media, the Espionage Act itself is a discredited relic of the WWI era, created as a tool to suppress political dissent and antiwar activism, and it is outrageous that the government chose to invoke it in the first place against Manning. Government employees who blow the whistle on war crimes, other abuses and government incompetence should be protected under the First Amendment.
We now live in a country where someone who exposes war crimes can be sentenced to life even if not found guilty of aiding the enemy, while those responsible for the war crimes remain free. If the government equates being a whistleblower with espionage or aiding the enemy, what is the future of journalism in this country? What is the future of the First Amendment?
Manning’s treatment, prosecution, and sentencing have one purpose: to silence potential whistleblowers and the media as well. One of the main targets has been our clients, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, for publishing the leaks. Given the U.S. government’s treatment of Manning, Assange should be granted asylum in his home country of Australia and given the protections all journalists and publishers deserve.
We stand in solidarity with Bradley Manning and call for the government to take heed and end its assault on the First Amendment.
Reporters without Borders.
MANNING VERDICT BLOW FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM AND ITS SOURCES
Reporters Without Borders regards today’s verdict in U.S. Army private Bradley Manning’s trial as dangerous. Although acquitted of “aiding the enemy,” he was found guilty of five counts of espionage and five counts of theft, for which he could receive a combined sentence of more than 100 years in prison.
The sentence is due to be announced at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow (1330 GMT).
The verdict is warning to all whistleblowers, against whom the Obama administration has been waging an unprecedented offensive that has ignored the public interest in their revelations. It also threatens the future of investigative journalism, which risks finding its sources drying up.
[...]
ACLU Ben Wizner.
ACLU Comment on Bradley Manning Verdict
"While we're relieved that Mr. Manning was acquitted of the most dangerous charge, the ACLU has long held the view that leaks to the press in the public interest should not be prosecuted under the Espionage Act," said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. "Since Manning already pleaded guilty to charges of leaking information – which carry significant punishment – it seems clear that the government was seeking to intimidate anyone who might consider revealing valuable information in the future."
Marcy Wheeler at Salon.
Manning verdict: What you need to know
Today's verdicts may be about Bradley Manning -- but here's why they also have huge consequences for the rest of us
That Lind found Manning guilty of 20 charges is not a surprise. Manning himself had pled guilty to 10 lesser offenses the day he read his statement, pleading to “unauthorized possession” and “willful communication” of most, but not all of the items he was accused of leaking. On several of the charges — notably, Manning’s leak of a video of Americans shooting a Reuters journalist — Lind accepted Manning’s lesser pleas.
Moreover, Lind had refused to throw out charges — including the aiding the enemy charge — that Manning’s defense argued the government had not substantiated. Lind had also changed the wording of three charges against Manning after the end of the trial, adjusting them to the evidence the government had actually submitted at trial.
[...]
And today’s guilty verdicts don’t tell us how long Manning will serve for his effort to alert Americans to what he believed to be potential long-term drawbacks to our counterterrorism and counterinsurgency policies. The proceeding will immediately start a sentencing phase, with more witnesses testifying for both sides, though many of the government’s witnesses will testify in secret. With the maximum charges on his guilty verdicts, he could spend the rest of his life in prison (journalist Alexa O’Brien tweets the maximum sentence could be 136 years).
Greenwald on CNN
The Grayson hearing is postponed until September. Bravo, President Obama for subverting the democratic process.
POSTPONED: Bipartisan Ad Hoc Hearing on Domestic Surveillance
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Congressman Alan Grayson (FL-09) has announced that tomorrow’s Bipartisan Ad Hoc Hearing on Domestic Surveillance will be postponed until early September. The ad hoc hearing was initially set to take place tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. Planned witnesses included Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian (via satellite); Julian Sanchez, Research Fellow at the Cato Institute; Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel at the ACLU; Yochai Benkler, Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard; and J. Kirk Wiebe, a former NSA senior analyst.
“Tomorrow’s ad hoc hearing would have conflicted with the President’s recently-announced meeting with the House Democratic Caucus,” Grayson explained. “As a result, we are reluctantly postponing it until Congress reconvenes in September. The American people want Congress to explore the legality, constitutionality, drawbacks, and supposed benefits of domestic surveillance – and we will ensure that these issues are evaluated at our ad hoc hearing in September.”
NYT editorial board.
A Mixed Verdict on Manning
Private Manning’s original leaks seemed careless in some ways, including names and details of American operations that The Times and other organizations did not publish. But there was also real value for the public in the documents about the conduct of the war in Iraq, including a video of a military helicopter shooting at two vans and killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists.
The judge in the court-martial, Col. Denise Lind, was wise to acquit Private Manning on the most serious charge against him — that he had “aided the enemy,” in this case Al Qaeda, by uploading the documents to the Internet, where he should have known Al Qaeda would be able to get them. Aiding the enemy is punishable by death. To convict under this law without requiring at least an intent to communicate with an enemy would have severely chilling implications for free speech, particularly in the age of the Internet.
[...]
When he entered his guilty plea, Private Manning said he was trying to shed light on the “day-to-day reality” of American war efforts. He hoped the information “could spark a debate about foreign policy in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan.” These are not the words of a man intent on bringing down the government. On the contrary, Private Manning continues to express his devotion to his country, despite being held without trial for three years, nine months of which amounted to punitive and abusive solitary confinement.
Private Manning still faces the equivalent of several life sentences on the espionage counts regarding disclosure of classified information. The government should satisfy itself with a more moderate sentence and then do something about its addiction to secrecy.
Spencer Ackerman says there will be a big release today on the Snowden files. This was probably planned to coincide with the Grayson hearing that Obama deep sixed. Greenwald also signaled this on the Sunday news shows.
bin Laden is dead but now we're getting new terrorist tapes from the former #2 .
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